Any Business can now build its own Website

By richard masters, Feb 12 2013 11:52AM

Lets face it, most businesses- however small- need a website these days. It is possible to debate whether all businesses need one but, on balance, the weight of evidence would suggest that most do.

The traditional approach

The traditional approach to building a website has been to hire a website designer who takes a brief and produces a website to an agreed specification at an agreed cost. Often these are little more than electronic brochures. Any additions/changes required are then made by the designer at an additional cost.

An unwelcome cost

For most businesses they represent an unwelcome upfront cost which they could usefully do without. Furthermore, they usually require regular updating which can be a further ongoing cost to the businesses P&L. They are seen as a necessary, but irritating, evil!

The changing role of websites in business

Furthermore, as most businesses are now aware, the role of websites are changing and they are now seen as being much more than simple brochures, but are the focal point for a large number their customer facing activities. The centre of their marketing ecosystem if you like.

The dilemma

Clearly, this poses a dilemma for a lot of businesses, they know they desperately need to invest in developing their marketing activities but they realise that this will require further significant investments from already stretched P&Ls. However if they don't do it they will potntailly be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace.

The case for Website Builders

Over the recent years a new class of product has emerged into the marketplace- WYWYG Website Builders- these tools enable businesses to build their own websites with minimal external expertise. If you can use a basic word-processing editor, you can use these tools.

A recent article identified 15 tools that are available on the market. The diagram below shows the number of sites that have been developed using just a handful of the more common tools- nearly 50 million, so it's not untried, nor unpopular, technology

I recently reviewed the capabilities of a few of them in some depth by building a basic website for an actual business using each of them in turn. They all delivered perfectly acceptable results!

Some advantages of Website Builders

In my judgement the advantages of these tools can be summarised as follows:

1. They cover the whole range of activities necessary to set up and run a website. A one stop shop including domains and hosting if you like.

2. They are flexible and business driven, allowing web pages to be updated in real time - just like you would any other document in your business.

3. They are facilities rich in that they allow you to easily incorporate: images and videos, other documents such as PDF's, Blogs, product information, slide shows, contact forms ,forums, online shops, payment systems etc

4. They allow the ready integration with social activity systems such as LinkedIn, Twitter and facebook etc via smart "widgets", to create in integrated marketing system rather than a static website.

5. They allow multiple users to update the site, so the endeavour can be a joint one if required.

How to get started

The good news is that most of the systems ( which are web based) have adopted the prevailing Freemium business model and allow you to build a free system first to check it does what you want before committing to the approach for real! The paid for cost are then only a few pounds a month including your own custom domain name. Most take transfers, if you have an existing purchased domain.

Comprehensive product reviews, and free downloadable, resources are available at this website and my own site has some more detailed information on how to go about it.

A good start point is to try and replicate your existing site to see how straight forward it really is, and then start adding the extra content and integrations you might like to have!

Are they a Panacea?

The answer is ,of course, no

Website builders canot meet all website requirements, and some will still require bespoke solutions. However, the 80:20 may not even apply and i would guess that over 90% of businesses could meet their requirements in this manner- and this percentage is increasing as the functionality of the tools develops over time.

Neither am i suggesting this is the only approach- the advocates of CMS based approaches using systems such as Wordpress- would rightly argue, that they are hugely popular and produce millions of highly functional sites.

Finally i am not looking to devalue website designers- a number of more progressive ones can see that this partnership with businesses is the way forward- the design elements in a website are still clearly important. Many are indeed broadening out into more marketing functions to cater for this change in requirements.

Conclusion

Websites are now so central to most businesses overall objectives it is only appropriate they should wish to gain control over them and manage the cost accordingly and this approach promtoes that

You can develop sites using your own resources or work with an external supplier in any combination which suits you and that you can afford. It promotes a shared partnership approach which leaves you, the business, in control.